Giving Voice To Those Whom Israel Relentlessly Demonizes

“You wouldn’t last a day if you were in the Gaza Strip,” a young woman in a cap and gown snarled at me several weeks ago. I stood in a long line of activists that newly-minted graduates and their families encountered as they left Harvard Yard. We were holding banners and the names of more than 100 Gazans killed during the creative, unarmed demonstrations in the Great March of Return.

In past years our graduation protest has attracted both muttered hostility and thumbs-up gestures. The anger expressed this year had a more frenzied edge to it, reflecting Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians and determination not to let the outside world see that Gazans are people too.

If only a daily read of Mondoweiss could be mandated as a detoxifying antidote! Through descriptive pieces, live blogs, eyewitness accounts and compelling videos and photos Mondoweiss has humanized and given voice to those whom Israel has relentlessly demonized.

I told the angry young woman this year that I had spent many months in the Gaza Strip during more than a dozen visits over 30 years. I told her I was shown the utmost hospitality despite the appalling conditions in which people were forced to live—and she turned the volume up. “You would be raped and tortured by Hamas. They are all animals!”

What could we achieve if someone like this would read Mondoweiss? You and I have read, thanks to Mondoweiss, the words of Gazans themselves about conditions in the Gaza Strip. We have learned why they are repeatedly risking their lives in the Great March of Return.

For eleven years, Gazans have been locked in an open-air prison, and Mondoweiss has enabled their stories to reach us. Mondoweiss’s timely articles have been especially useful to me in making public presentations about Gaza. I have used the site’s reporting to create materials to distribute at a “die-in” outside the Israeli consulate and at other Gaza solidarity rallies.

Because Mondoweiss strengthens my activism, I am pleased to add my voice to those urging you to contribute and help strengthen Mondoweiss, during this summer campaign to raise $60,000.

Mondoweiss has skewered justification by Israel’s hasbara industry of the gunning down of journalists, medics, and children. When the U.S. mainstream media has reproduced unquestioned the Israeli spin—that its snipers merely react when protests “turn violent” —Mondoweiss has brilliantly taken The New York Times and its counterparts to task. If you’re like me, you have found these analyses both validating and useful in persuading others to think critically.

Nancy Murray at one of many demonstrations

And I’ve relied on Mondoweiss in meetings with elected officials. A group I was in presented information from Mondoweiss to our U.S. Senators, and within days both Senators signed Bernie Sanders’ call for immediate action against the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

You know as well as I do that Israel’s policy in Gaza is “incremental genocide,” as Israeli historian Ilan Pappé puts it. A massive collective effort is needed if we are to have any hope of ending US complicity in this atrocity.

I donate to Mondoweiss because I know that ever more robust journalism is indispensable for this massive effort. I know that Mondoweiss can be trusted to deliver original reporting and vital insights. I hope you’ll agree and join me in supporting this essential work.

When change seems remote, we can gain strength and renewed determination from the remarkable stories of the human spirit Mondoweiss brings us. I urge you to use, share and support Mondoweiss.Please give today.

If you and I act to inform the world, twenty-one-year-old medic Razan al-Najjar and so many others slaughtered during the Great March of Return will not have died in vain.

About Nancy Murray

Nancy Murray served on the international steering committee of the Gaza Freedom March, co-founded the Gaza Mental Health Foundation, and works today with the Boston-based Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine.

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16 Responses

The zionists have an end game I am sure. I have read comments by some predicting that by 2020 these brutal zionists would have a major offensive, to get rid of the Palestinians, and take over the territories.
The thought is scary.

Kay, main reason why Egypt is not supporting the Gaza population is because the long term goal of Israel is to offload responsibility for Gaza population on Egypt and wash their hands of it – including all refugees from Palestine who are still in refugee camps.

By supporting Gaza, Egypt would fulfil Zionist wet dream of getting rid of sizable part of Palestinian population from Palestine that they covet.

It is unbelievable, and even sad. To think the world let this happen, although the main culprit who enabled and aided them, is the world’s greatest democracy, who keeps preaching equal rights, and human rights.

Making Gaza un livable sounds great in Hebrew where Gazan means vermin.
Israelis think they will get away with it .
In reality there will be even more reasons to hate the guts of every Zionist. And anti Semitism will grow faster than cherry tomatoes in Sharon region hothouses.

Only Peter Beinart and Bar Rafeli can save Israel now.
There may also be a porn movie in it. Ron Jeremy rounds up his old goy Co stars and brings them to the Kirya to de groupthink the IDF in the only way he knows.

Violence is not working because of the Holocaust and sympathy for Jewish past suffering. A vigil, peaceful demonstration all along the fence with people sitting or kneeling in prayer, back from fence so they don’t threaten, in shifts so vigil is ongoing. Bring cover against tear gas and make sure journalists are present. Hold signs while sitting in prayer … East Jerusalem capital of Palestine, No Apartheid, No Bulldozing of Palestinian land, etc. non violent signs, no threats. Some may die, but they cannot continue to kill praying people when the world is watching. Hamas, PLO must begin to understand the violence has not worked. They need a non-violent approach such as Ghandi in India and Martin Luther King in the U S. which obtained results.

Constant demonization is resolutely practiced by Hamas and this site, so calling out Israel is pure hypocrisy. By blindly supporting Hamas, a transparently genocidal, Islamist terror group, you perpetuate this war and the misery of the population they dominate. Assigning motives to Egypt or Israel regarding Gaza is conspiratorial hogwash. Genocide and ethnic cleansing is the stated goal of only one actor in this conflict. Hamas in case you missed it.

Nobody here is blindly supporting HAMAS, which sees itself as an Occupation Resistance Entity. There’s a rational argument for this stance because Israel is the Occupier, not the Palestinians. There’s also a factually based argument that Israel has long been engaged in slow ethnic cleansing. Egypt’s Sisi holds key to Trump’s Sinai plan 4 Palestinians: Gaza can be kept under Israel’s thumb without Israel sharing any blame. Egypt becomes Gaza’s visible prison wardens, just as Abbas/PA have served as jailers in the West Bank. http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/has-cairo-caved-israel-s-sinai-aid-plan-gaza-1521237499 via @MiddleEastEye

“Genocide and ethnic cleansing is the stated goal of only one actor in this conflict. Hamas in case you missed it.”

Sigh. More nonsense courtesy of Hasbara Central.

To state the screaming obvious, as any first year student of Middle East history knows full well, it is the entity known as “Israel” that for 70 years has carried out “genocide and ethnic cleansing” against the indigenous Palestinians.

Jan 19, 2018 – Haaretz
Opinion: “In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism” by Zeev Sternhell.**
EXCERPT:
“I frequently ask myself how a historian in 50 or 100 years will interpret our period. When, he will ask, did people in Israel start to realize that the state that was established in the War of Independence, on the ruins of European Jewry and at the cost of the blood of combatants some of whom were Holocaust survivors, had devolved into a true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants. When did some Israelis understand that their cruelty and ability to bully others, Palestinians or Africans, began eroding the moral legitimacy of their existence as a sovereign entity?”

Also:https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-gaza-border-killings-expose-israel-s-true-mentality-1.6032716
Opinion: “Gaza Border Killings Expose Israel’s True Mentality
And Bezalel Smotrich, like the cynical face of Avigdor Lieberman, reflects our own face, the face of Netanyahu’s advance guard for the West.”
Zeev Sternhell Apr 27, 2018 – Haaretz
** Zeev Sternhell is a Polish-born Israeli historian, political scientist, commentator on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and writer. He is one of the world’s leading experts on fascism. Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

in peacewardoc’s perfect world the killing of a person like razan al najjar would go unacknowledged, unnoticed, silent into the night. the lives (and deaths) of these youths are so unremarkable the very act of reporting their slaughter (or naming their jewish killers god forbid) amounts to a heresy of biblical proportions; demonization.

which reminds me, this morning i was listening to a podcast , a 20 minute interview with rawan yaghi, another palestinian youth in gaza around razan’s age, a person who, in wardoc’s world, would be better off silent. i recommend:

Peacedoc: “Genocide and ethnic cleansing is the stated goal of only one actor in this conflict. Hamas in case you missed it.”

Not according to their (now obsolete) charter:
“Article 6 … for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out. ”
“Article 31 … Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that.

It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror. Everyone of them is at variance with his fellow-religionists, not to speak about followers of other religionists. Past and present history are full of examples .”

On the other hand we witnesse not the goal, but also the realization of genocide and ethnic cleansing commited by Zionists. They are even calculating calories in Gaza like the Nazis did in their concentration camps.

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